As we reported earlier this month, it’s rather easy to inadvertently wake up Samsung’s artificially intelligent assistant, Bixby. Needless to say, some folks aren’t necessarily the biggest fans of Bixby, or the dedicated Bixby button used to summon it. Thankfully, more vehement haters of the Bixby button can root their phones and change what the button actually does, though this does require a bit of work. Fortunately, there’s a much easier way of dealing with this problem and we’ve made this step-by-step tutorial to show you how to remap the Bixby Button.
Thanks to the accessibility options on Samsung phones, plenty of apps have emerged in Google Play that are essentially designed to hijack the Bixby button and initiate different actions before Bixby can even launch. Before we continue, however, it’s important to note that remapping will disable Bixby, so if you do intentionally use and enjoy the feature, keep in mind that you will no longer be able to do so after these next few steps.
Also, believe it or not, Samsung isn’t super cool with third parties repurposing its beloved Bixby button — the company has even killed this remapping bypass with software updates in the past. That said, a future Samsung update (or some other measure) could soon render this remapping technique useless as well. Although, if it does, another third party will surely finagle another bypass, because as stated by Dr. Ian Malcolm in the sci-fi thriller, Jurassic Park, “life finds a way.”
Now that we’ve got all of the fine print out of the way, if you’d still like to continue with this hack, go to Gooogle Play and search for “Bixby Remapper.” There are a few options to choose from, however, we will be using the Bixby Button Remapper. If Samsung decides to kill this option in the future, feel free to try one of the other offerings in the Play Store. Once you’ve installed Bixby Button Remapper, you’ll need to open the app and turn on the feature by pressing the sliding toggle at the top of the screen.
The app will then warn you that you should not utilize any other remapping software in conjunction with Bixby Button Remapper, meaning you should only attempt to use one of these remappers at a time. Once you’ve turned the feature on, tap the three dots at the top and select Go to Accessibility. You can also manually search for this in the Settings menu if you’re using a different app and it doesn’t have this option. Once there, look under Services at the bottom, and you’ll see two options for controlling the app. One is slightly more stable, while the other has a little less delay (these are appropriately named “More Stable” and “Less Delay,” respectively). Select Less Delay and turn it on using the toggle.
If this option doesn’t work to your liking, you can always return and select the More Stable. Once on, select Bixby Button Action and choose what you would like the Bixby Button to initiate (this can also be set to Nothing as well). Once you’ve selected your desired remapping action, press the physical Bixby button to confirm that it works. Voila.
David Cogen — a regular contributor here at Digital Trends — runs TheUnlockr, a popular tech blog that focuses on tech news, tips and tricks, and the latest tech. You can also find him on Twitter discussing the latest tech trends.